Gathering Mass

San Diego DSA cochair, Shauna M, leads a canvassing training

(An Electoral Campaign for Us) At the risk of being cheesy, this is what democracy looks like.

Before I got active in politics, there was Bob Filner. When he was mayor, I was still married, and my focus was on trying to balance my family responsibilities with feeding my creative side as the board member of a local literary nonprofit. I had the same kind of interest in electoral politics as most Americans: not much in between presidential elections, and then with a resigned sense that the fix was most likely in.

But Filner broke into my attention and indeed the attention of millions through revelations that he’d abused an extraordinary number of women. If you don’t know who he is, I’m sorry to tell you now that what was so shocking about this wasn’t simply the number of women stepping forward, it’s that Filner was the great progressive hope. He’d served in Congress before running for mayor of San Diego and had been a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The three people who publicly blew the whistle on his behavior put their careers on the altar of justice, and I’m forever grateful to them.

Why so personal? Well, hello, I’m a woman. My daughter is a woman. I know and love so many of them. But also, the one thing that hit me clear as lightning when the accusations brought forward one woman telling her story, then another, then just an awful procession, was that his behavior had been witnessed and known by many more people than the three whistleblowers. This was a man with a long political career. People behind the scenes experience disruption, even if they don’t see an assault firsthand. They know something’s up. They ask, they talk.

The fix was in

And I’m telling you this now, because I want you to know that this is a big part of why you need to get involved in electoral politics. Even if you’re experiencing the kind of disgust I felt viscerally in 2013, even if it’s going to take you a minute to process. Even if you could not fathom how a presidential incumbent you were fixed on to support was clearly faltering in his capacities and earnestly facilitating material support for genocide. The fix was in, in spite of all these unacceptable and outrageous priors and it’s going to take many of us – masses of us – to break it.

What does that look like? In DSA, a lot of our members sign up because they’re pissed off at the conventional options. Like me they can’t handle the dissonance of living in what’s pledged to be the world’s strongest democracy, yet one in which they don’t have the option of voting for someone they trust to advance their values. Some are ready to throw in on candidate campaigns from day one, some want to focus first on alternatives for building power. Both answers are right. But ultimately, we need the masses to engage in elections.

I came to electoral politics through my organizing for ecosocialist policy; specifically, Green New Deal initiatives that expressly affirmed the need to overcome capitalism in the fight for our planetary future. I saw how DSA member candidates and elected officials in New York were using the attention on them as candidates and elected officials to proselytize for our version of a Green New Deal, not because it polled well, but because it was the right thing to do. Because I want my daughter to exist on a livable planet, I signed right up.

Fun as hell

And then I found out that when you get connected to campaigns you care about, it’s fun as hell. If you’re a private person, you might assume that people will be indignant when you knock on their doors. You might assume they’ll all shoo you away, and that it’ll be humiliating. What actually happens is that the people who don’t want to talk to anyone unexpectedly just won’t come to the door. Maybe a few will shoo you away. But in between those experiences you’re going to have sincere conversations with neighbors who wouldn’t know anything about the choices to be made in local elections or primaries without hearing from someone like you, who has no more stake in the outcome than your one precious life.

At the risk of being cheesy, this is what democracy looks like. It’s not passively being a booster for insider candidates in the desperate interest of doing something. Hopefully once you find out how fun canvassing is, you’ll start getting to know the people organizing support for one candidate or another, and you’ll start learning more about who’s really putting in the work to stay unbeholden to the donors and interests hostile to the working class. All that learning does not come overnight, but it does come pretty easily when you step one foot after another into action. Don’t lose your anger. Let it settle and decompose, nourishing a righteous tomorrow. Have fun with it and the people joining you in the work – we’re in this together.

[This article was originally published in The Jumping Off Place on May 14.]